Here be dragons: A window into Mizo myth

In this season of goddesses, demons, ghouls and victories of good over evil, step into a world of little-known legends, featuring sprites from an ancient land.

Weretigers, sky maidens and bird-beaked witches are some of the fantastical beings that come to life in Cherrie Lalnunziri Chhangte’s Mizo Myths, whose second edition was published by Blaft in July, with nine stories added to the original set of six.

Zawlpala and Tualvungi: A tale of love, loss and how the bulbul got its red vent. (Illustration for HT by Alyssa Pachuau)

The first edition, published in 2016, was born of her post-doctoral research at Stanford University, a comparative study of Native American and Mizo narratives. “I realised there was a lot of research on the Native American side, but not

(Illustration for HT by Alyssa Pachuau)

Sichangneii is a beautiful sky-dwelling maiden with enormous feathered wings. On one of her visits to Earth, she is kidnapped by a widower, who strips her of her feathers so she cannot return home, and then makes her his wife. The story has much in common, so far, with the Scottish folk tale about a fisherman who steals the skin of a selkie (or seal woman), but in this Mizo myth, that is just the beginning of a long saga involving generations of a family, a quest for revenge, and magic.

The ultimate hero is Sichangneii’s grandson, Fahrahtea, who loses his entire family to a Chawmnu, a big, burly, hairy, female demon. The young orphan believes his mother is still being held captive, so he travels the land, cleverly gaining boons from different communities. This helps him eventually outwit the Chawmnu, and reunite with his mother.

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A witch meets a violent end

(Illustration for HT by Alyssa Pachuau)

The Hmuichukchuriduninu is an evil, old, bird-beaked, child-eating witch of the forest, bearing echoes of both traditional tellings of Hansel and Gretel and the Russian folk villain Baba Yaga. In this tale, she leads two girls down the wrong forest path and to her home, pretending to be their aunt. She then kills one, snacks on her brains, drinks her blood and devours her flesh. And dreams of having the other one for dinner. But the second girl manages to escape and returns with her family, who set up a complicated and brutal trap, at the end of which Hmuichukchuriduninu is torn to pieces by a ferocious dog, an angry goat, a wild boar and an enraged ox.

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A trick to trap a Thumbelina

(Illustration for HT by Alyssa Pachuau)

The Story of Kungawrhi has elements in common with Thumbelina. In the Mizo tale, a keimi, a human who can turn into a tiger, falls in love with a beautiful young woman born from the thumb of her father, the village chief.

The weretiger sees the girl, decides he must marry her, then uses witchcraft to first make her ill, then heal her, thus convincing her that she can only be healthy be his side.

She is taken in by his ruse, and they marry. But when her father discovers his true identity, he sends out a rescue mission in the form of two brothers (sort of heroes-for-hire). With some help from the gods, they use seeds of fire, seeds of water, seeds of thorns and seeds of rocks to defeat the weretiger.

It doesn’t end there. One of the two brothers now has his heart set on marrying the beautiful Kungawrhi, and betrays his brother to the Khuavang (which are goblin-like forest beings), in order to flee with her. The betrayed brother turns out to be the true hero, valiantly fighting off the Khuavang, returning home to reveal his brother’s evil plot, and ending up with a grateful (if traumatised) Kungawrhi for his wife.

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A good disguise for a goblin

(Illustration for HT by Alyssa Pachuau)

The Phungpuinu is an extremely ugly and rude sort of female goblin. In the story of Tumchhingi and Raldawna, she mistakes the beautiful shadow of Tumchhingi for her own, tricks her into exchanging clothes with her, then swallows the beautiful woman whole.

When the woman’s husband returns to the banyan tree where she had been waiting for him, he and the Phungpuinu engage in an exchange quite like that between Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf masquerading as her grandmother.

“Tumchhingi, why do your eyes look so stretched?” Raldawna asks.

“I kept straining them, looking in the distance, waiting to see you return,” she says.

“And why are your fingers so long and pointy, like talons?” he asks.

“From the moment you left, I kept pointing in the direction you went,” she says.

The story continues thus, with Raldawna eventually finding his beloved in a bottle gourd that grew from a seed belched up by the Phungpuinu. The women must now fight to the death until Tumchhingi cuts the Phungpuinu in two (with a little trickery and help from Raldawna), and is finally reunited with her husband.